A shady friend—for Torrid days
by jomiddlemarch
Summary: Ingleside, late fall, Gilbert is a typical doctor.


Gilbert made a terrible patient. Anne had hardly been able to convince him to stay in bed, though he had coughed through two days and a night, a wracking cough he had not been able to suppress and that liberal doses of honey mixed in with a little hot rum had done nothing to ease when he finally agreed to take it a few hours before dawn broke. It was fortunate that the weather was equally miserable, a cold, dank days where a wet wind lashed at Ingleside, never quite turning to snow; the nights barely lightened to day and she could see in his hazel eyes his reluctance to go out as he'd struggled to do for the past few days, even with the collar of his coat turned up and a wool scarf snug around his neck. She was glad of the livid colors, the way every room in the house beckoned, but mostly that it helped to make Gil acquiesce to her and not venture forth. His strong character had a fair measure of wilfulness she discovered and she had nearly had to stamp her foot to make him stay in bed this day; it was a measure of his exhaustion that she had succeeded.

She'd made haste in the nursery, but Jem was her sunny boy as usual and her more mercurial Walter gurgled happily from his crib, giving her a wide smile she could not resist, even as she worried about their father. Susan would have her hands full, but she seemed to like it and though Walter was only nine months old and still nursing, the housekeeper had already made some vague Susanish remarks about how nice it would be to have a newborn baby in the house again though Anne, for herself, couldn't imagine how busy she would be if there were to be three children under three years old, all clamoring for her. She had managed the Hammond triplets handily enough but she hadn't cared for them, not the way she loved her sweet little boys, sturdy, curly-haired Jem and Walter who had mastered "mama" first and caught her heart. Right now, Gilbert seemed like another overgrown boy himself, a sullen, feverish boy, though she hadn't grasped the truth of it until she'd laid a hand on his cheek and felt the way his skin burned, far more noticeably than earlier in the week when he had only been a bit warm and cranky with it. She let her palm rest against him, his unshaven cheek rough, the shadows dark beneath his eyes, and he turned towards her, muttering "cool, feels good, so hot." She saw the haziness in his eyes, how tired he was but fretful, as the babies could be. There had been weeks Walter had needed to be walked and rocked for hours before he would sleep and she saw now how much his head had his father's shape, Gilbert's hair damp and matted with the broken sleep he had managed. Her hands knew the feeling of Gil's cheekbones, the curve at the back of his head from all their embraces but only the simplest comfort was wanted now.

"Stay? I don't feel so bad if you're here, your hands feel nice," he asked, more flushed than he had been with the typhoid, not nearly so gaunt, but still the memory of that illness was overlaid, and she thought how she would have run to him if he had called for her then, heedless of anything but him, the crack in his voice, his restless hands in the bedclothes.

"Of course, but you must try to sleep and take a little broth or tea when I tell you. I may not be a doctor, but I am a doctor's wife," she said, relieved that he had stopped fighting to leave the bed, to dress and go to his surgery where there could be no sicker patient that young Dr. Blythe today. He kept his eyes closed but she saw a faint, passing smile on his dear face at her command. "And I think a compress would do for you, help lower your temperature a little while we wait for the phenacetin powders to work," she added. He'd choked the bitter mess down with some difficulty but he swore by it in his practice and had told her enough times of how it helped moderate a crisis that she had rifled through his black bag without hesitation to find a dose for him.

"I'd rather you, just you. Won't you lie down with me?" he asked plaintively.

It was so unlike him, her confident, direct Gilbert, that she saw both how ill he was and how he trusted her. He'd told her how many hours he'd been alone when he was ill after Redmond "the farm still needed running, just sitting beside me couldn't do me any good, Mother said, though the ceiling made a dull companion" and she considered how little an imposition it would be for Susan to mind the babies a few hours while she nursed Gilbert herself.

"Yes, I'll stay with you. Perhaps you'd like to hear about the time Parker Pringle tried to have a matching broadcloth suit made for his dog for Sunday dinner? The one who sat at table with them?" Anne said, settling herself next to Gilbert, gently stroking his forehead. He'd closed his eyes again after watching her exchange her morning dress for her dressing sacque and though she could hear the faint whistle of his breathing, he seemed a little easier, didn't grimace as much as he shifted in the bed.

"Mmm, yes. I like to hear you, Anne-girl," he replied, coughing at the end, but it sounded a little looser and she thought he would sleep soon, perhaps for the whole day. In the early evening, he would be cool enough for her hands to be warm again, up to a visit from Jem and Walter, pink-cheeked in their nightdresses, ready to drink the chicken broth Susan labored over during the long afternoon while Anne had read Wilkie Collins and the shadows on Gilbert's face and dozed with her palm against his chest, collecting his heartbeat, prepared to unravel a tangled breath.


End file.
